


Developments

by halotolerant



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Flirting, Episode: s01e08 Fromage, Feelings, Gaslighting, Grinding, Hannibal is Hannibal, M/M, Manipulation, Warning for All the Bad of S1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-05-13 23:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5721268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Today Hannibal believed, for nearly two hours, that Will Graham was dead. </p><p>That experience had been… more, than he might have expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Developments

**Author's Note:**

> **Notes & Additional Warnings**: OK, so this is a coda to 'Fromage' based off the following prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _Drunk Will highkey flirting with Hannibal, telling Hanni he's a virgin and asking him to deflower him_
> 
>  
> 
> Hannibal is Hannibal - there is all the S1 gaslighting and Bad Things he is doing to Will. Intrinsic in the scenario is the potential for dub-con, but no sex happens (sorry).

 

Today Hannibal believed, for nearly two hours, that Will Graham was dead. 

 

That experience had been… more, than he might have expected. 

 

More unsettling. More distracting. More distressing. 

 

He cannot really recall the last time he registered feeling distress, certainly outside of a dream. 

 

But Will is fine - as fine as he ever is, slightly feverish, sleep-deprived, prone to hallucinations, all as it should be. 

 

Hannibal’s never before had to actually reason to himself why he isn’t taking Will to be treated. 

 

This is all ridiculous, he reminds himself, as they make their way from the police patrol car that dropped them off, across the crunching snow to the front door of Hannibal’s house. 

 

(Let me see you home, Will had said, awkwardly, blushing a little. Hannibal had reflected that an evening session with the lightbox would be useful. And had felt other things that were not practical)

 

Now they’re standing in the kitchen and Hannibal has put out a bottle of very good scotch and two tumblers, even though he had been thinking of wine, even though there’s still supper to be made. 

 

Hannibal would relish cooking for any unsuspecting guest, usually, but right now the thought of preparing coq au poupre, even with a more interesting substitute for the chicken, is frankly tiring. 

 

“Do you have anything in your freezer?” Will asks, and every molecule of Hannibal’s body freezes for a micron of a breath, until he realises Will has been thinking as he has, and is wondering if Hannibal has something like a ready meal to fall back on to feed himself. 

 

He clears his throat. “Perhaps my cassoulet,” he says. “Yes, that will reheat. You will stay, I hope?”

 

“I don’t want to be in the way,” Will says, and takes a gulp of his drink perhaps larger than necessary. 

 

When Will had come through the office door, and seen Hannibal sitting bruised and bloodied and apparently traumatised, he had moved to sit so close to him that their legs brushed. He had stared at Hannibal’s face, studying it intently until he remembered himself and looked away. 

 

Hannibal could wish that Will would look at him directly more often. Hannibal can read him most of the time, naturally, but it is easier, and somehow more delightful, to have his eyes open and clear, ready and unabashed. 

 

“Not in the way, I assure you,” Hannibal says, and smiles. “Besides, I will put you to use. Someone must help me prepare the haricots blancs. I believe in preparing the beans separately from the meat, which some regard as heresy.”

 

“It offends me deeply,” Will says dryly, and licks his lip for a moment, and smiles, soft. “Just tell me what to do.”

 

Hannibal is used to inveigling people into the preparation of what he eats, and volunteering them as sous-chef is not a small part of it - he’s had many of the good and great of Baltimore standing in the borrowed apron Will now wears, chopping with knives they handle carelessly - badly, often, by any standard. 

 

It is oddly different, with Will, and not just because Will can dice in a manner worthy of the technical term. 

 

Not so long ago, Hannibal thought Will was dead. Instead, Will is here, in Hannibal’s home, in his kitchen, and they are cooking together. 

 

How mundane a chain of feelings. Ordinary people might have these sensations, and for others just as ordinary as themselves. 

 

Perhaps that is it? The similarity to oneself? Very tribal. Very human. 

 

Except Hannibal has never thought of himself as human, particularly, and not similar to them, anyway. 

 

Does Will see himself as human? Hannibal watches him, intent on his task, shoulders flexing, sleeves rolled up, and then watches some more. 

 

“A glass of wine, now, perhaps?” Hannibal suggests, when the food has gone into the oven to heat over and they have half an hour to fill. There is always the lightbox, of course, but half an hour is not enough time, and it would be a shame not to do justice to the meal. 

 

“Sure, why not?” Will hands over his scotch glass and smiles some more. “I think I might be a bit drunk already, though, fair warning.”

 

“You’ve not had much.”

 

“I didn’t eat today,” Will says, and sighs heavily. “There wasn’t… I overslept and then.. I wasn’t feeling so good. And then, you know… murder. In fact the last thing I ate was that pudding of yours, yesterday. That was good pudding.”

 

Speaking for longer, his intoxication is easier to perceive. 

 

“I can give you some biscuits whilst we wait,” Hannibal suggests, and goes to his cupboard. 

 

When he turns, Will is standing right by him, a whisper of a gap away from crowding him against the kitchen fittings. He’s still smiling, laughing slightly. 

 

He must have been putting that scotch away faster than Hannibal noticed. Not that the encephalitis would help. 

 

Will would be even more receptive than usual, just now, to destabilizing - this is an important chance and Hannibal should not ignore it, should be getting them up to the light-box, cassoulet or not. It won’t spoil with a little longer in the oven. The first thing is to think of an excuse…

 

“What I didn’t say, yesterday,” Will is murmuring, “about having kissed Alana, and… and all that…”

 

Hannibal puts his hand on Will’s shoulder. He means to push him back, but Will interrupts the action. 

 

“I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell anyone,” Will in continuing. His eyes are wide open, intent, filling Hannibal’s field of vision. “I kissed her. I’ve kissed people, you know? But never… never anything else.” 

 

“Will,” Hannibal says, in his calmest voice. “You are drunk. You don’t really want to tell me this.”

 

“Never touched someone, properly,” Will says, and draws back a little, wrapping his arms round himself. “Never been touched. Virgin. Analyse that, doctor.”

 

“The concept of ‘virginity’ is one largely manufactured by society in order to…”

 

He’s stopped by the sudden presence of Will’s lips against his own, Will having stumbled forward, a look in his eyes not so different from the one he wore in Hannibal’s office hours earlier. 

 

Wanting. 

 

“You should do it,” Will is muttering, and he’s pressed close to Hannibal, all his smell of salt and dog and blood and illness. Hannibal can’t help taking a second, deeper, scent of him. Will is plastering himself along the line of Hannibal’s body, and he’s hot with fever, and his pulse is thudding and he’s hard in his trousers, pushing against Hannibal’s thigh. 

 

“You should fuck me,” Will says. “I want you to. I need balance, you said it, you’re right, I need… And why would you look at me how you do if you didn’t want me?”

 

And Will grinds up again against him, and Hannibal’s body is human, in some very specific ways, and grinds back. 

 

“Yessss,” Will hisses. “Come on. Touch me. Fuck me. Work me open and… I tried it, got a plug and… but I bet it’d feel better with a person. With you. God, your fingers, I think sometimes…”

 

The clock on the oven shows twenty minutes remaining cooking time. Hannibal holds onto this fact in the centre and front of his mind, because if anything else could drive that from supremacy it would be quite ridiculous. 

 

“You’re drunk, Will,” Hannibal says, as gently as he can. “You don’t know what you’re saying, and I don’t want to take advantage of you like this.”

 

Will makes a disgruntled, petulant noise. Like he might if Hannibal were to take him to bed and finger him open slowly and lushly and be the first to stimulate him anally, and make him pant for it and then draw back, and make him beg…

 

“But I trust you, Hannibal,” Will says, and sighs, and butts his head in against Hannibal’s neck. 

 

So hungry to be touched, so ready for it. This could be a way to mould him, better even than any other. 

 

“I trust you,” Will says again. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”

 

Today, Hannibal thought that Tobias Budge had hurt Will. And he had killed Tobias Budge and that had still not felt like half enough of what was due. 

 

Hannibal stands up, and pushes Will away from him. 

 

“I’m going to take you through to my living room, Will. I’m going to suggest you lie down on the sofa, and I will put a blanket over you, and you can sleep a little, and then you will eat. You have had a long day, and I will hold none of this conversation against you. If you wish, you can pretend it never happened.”

 

He’s not sure what he would do if Will was to flinch, or ask again, eyes wide. 

 

And he will never find out, because Will sighs with the irritation and lack of judgement of the inebriated, and follows him meekly and lies down as instructed. Soon, his eyes are closed. 

 

Hannibal tucks the blanket in, and moves a lock of hair on Will’s forehead which offends his sense of symmetry. Will’s head is too warm to the touch. Perhaps some soluble Tylenol in the drink he will offer later - that is only being a good host. 

 

As Hannibal moves to leave the room, he passes the cabinet with the light box in it. 

 

He pauses a moment, and then walks away, back to the kitchen, a little hamstrung by the stiffness of the blood still caught between his legs, and an uneasy sense of a misstep somewhere, somehow. 


End file.
